Kevin Drum links to Ezra and asks why efforts to demonize right winger sugar daddies the way George Soros was demonized hasn't worked:
The left, of course, has tried its best to demonize "Scaife-funded," "Coors-funded," etc., but it's never really worked. They kept giving their money away with no problems. But why? Is it because (a) the right is better at demonizing than we are (with help from their fellow travelers, of course), or (b) we get scared and back down a lot faster than they do? Or both?
George Soros is Jewish. The idea of a conniving all-powerful millionaire who aims to control the state with his influence is pretty much of a piece with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Back when Bloomberg did that gun bust in Virginia, NRA publications were depicting him with familiar anti-Semitic iconography.
Of course, the disproportionate fear of "Jewish influence" on politics (on the left as well as the right) from the sort of people who lament that kind of thing reveals the awkward in-between Jews occupy in terms of ethnic identity in this country. No one complains about the "Irish" or "Italian" influence in politics because the Irish and Italians are now considered white. Most of the time, no one complains about "Jewish" influence either. They just say this rich guy George Soros is trying to destroy Christianity with all his money. But simply omitting the religion of the target doesn't change the nature of the critique, which relies on old anti-Semitic tropes.
-- A. Serwer
